As discussed in more detail in the '520 Application, the language environment surrounding a young child is key to the child's development. A child's language and vocabulary ability at age three, for example, can indicate intelligence and test scores in academic subjects such as reading and math at later ages. Improving language ability typically results in a higher intelligent quotient (IQ) as well as improved literacy and academic skills.
Exposure to a rich aural or listening language environment in which many words are spoken with a large number of interactive conversational turns between the child and adult and a relatively high number of affirmations versus prohibitions may promote an increase in the child's language ability and IQ. The effect of a language environment surrounding a child of a young age on the child's language ability and IQ may be particularly pronounced.
In the first four years of human life, a child experiences a highly intensive period of speech and language development due in part to the development and maturing of the child's brain. Even after children begin attending school or reading, much of the child's language ability and vocabulary, including the words known (receptive vocabulary) and the words the child uses in speech (expressive vocabulary), are developed from conversations the child experiences with other people.
In addition to hearing others speak to them and responding (i.e., conversational turns), a child's language development may be promoted by the child's own speech. The child's own speech is a dynamic indicator of cognitive functioning, particularly in the early years of a child's life. Research techniques have been developed which involve counting a young child's vocalizations and utterances and length of utterances to estimate a child's cognitive development. Current processes of collecting information may include obtaining data via a human observer and/or a transcription of an audio recording of the child's speech. The data is analyzed to provide metrics with which the child's language environment can be analyzed and potentially modified to promote increasing the child's language development and IQ.
The presence of a human observer, however, may be intrusive, influential on the child's performance, costly, and unable to adequately obtain information on a child's natural environment and development. Furthermore, the use of audio recordings and transcriptions is a costly and time-consuming process of obtaining data associated with a child's language environment. The analysis of such data to identify canonical babbling, count the number of words, determine mean length of utterances and other vocalization metrics, and determine content spoken is also time intensive.
Counting the number of words and determining content spoken may be particularly time and resource intensive, even for electronic analysis systems, since each word is identified along with its meaning. Accordingly, a need exists for methods and systems for obtaining and analyzing data associated with a child's language environment independent of content and reporting metrics based on the data in a timely manner. The analysis should also include an automatic assessment of the child's expressive language development.
Beyond an automatic assessment of a child's expressive language development, a need exists for the development of specific metrics and methodologies for determining specific developmental disorders in a child. As expressed above, a test that is largely non-invasive, in terms of providing a human observer, and that is of low cost while at the same time generating a substantial amount of data is desirable. One such developmental disorder of interest that can be detected through the analysis of speech is autism. Another factor contributing to language development may be emotion. When children are exposed to an emotionally stressed environment there learning and language development may suffer. Therefore, a system and method for detecting the emotional content of subject interactions may be desirable for assisting in language development.